The Good Fight

Imbued with love, honesty, and selflessness, The Good Fight is virtuosic in its musicality, direct in its language, and infinitely relatable. In a landscape overrun with abstract indulgence and shallow trend-chasers, the Prince George’s County, Maryland artist has created a record that reminds you that it’s music before it’s hip-hop. For Oddisee, “The Good Fight” is about living fully as a musician without succumbing to the traps of hedonism, avarice, and materialism. It’s music that yields an intangible feeling: the sacral sound of an organ whine, brass horns, or a cymbal crash. It’s a meditation on our capacity to love and the bonds binding us together. It’s our ambition and greed warring with our sense of propriety - a list of paradoxes we all face when living and striving. Oddisee’s production simmers in its own orchestral gumbo. You sense he’s really a jazzman in different form, inhabiting the spirit of Roy Ayers and other past greats. The Fader’s compared him to a musical MC Escher, calling hailing his “grandiose and symphonic sound” and “relevant relatable messages.” Pitchfork praised his “eclectic soulful boom-bap.” “The Good Fight” acknowledges the stacked odds, but refuses to submit

On his new album, The Good Fight, rapper/producer Oddisee eschews mainstream attention and creative limitations. It's technically hip-hop, but it goes in all sorts of musical directions.

Mixing the bright retro soul of Aloe Blacc with the literate and alive lyrics of Kendrick Lamar, underground rapper Oddisee's work is more persuasive than usual on his 2015 LP The Good Fight, an excellent album that strives to crossover but doesn't pull any punches.

Having been on the grind churning out a variety of projects over the past several years in various creative guises, Maryland-reared, Brookly...